After a five year break, one of the most prestigious races in south-eastern Europe is set to return to the cycling calendar next week. With a history going back to 1910, when the monthly publication Car Magazine held the first edition of the Circuit Wallachia, later followed by 50 editions of the Turul României on from 1934, it's definitely about time.

And what better reason for the return of a bike race through Romania could there been than the 100th birthday of The Great Unification in 1918, which resulted in all the historical provinces inhabited by Romanians to get together, within one single country, Romania.

Back then, the eyes of all the Romanians were turned toward Alba Iulia, where 1918 in the Great National Assembly the Resolution was read, officially proclaiming the union of the Romanian provinces with the Kingdom of Romania - and that's, where the 51st edition of the Turul României will start next Wednesday.

Stage 1: Alba Iulia - Sibiu (154,7 km)

From Alba Iulia's majestic citadel to Sibiu's historic centre, the first stage of race will be a bumpy one, with no less than five climbs on the route, before the stage finishes on the Piața Mare in Sibiu. The last 600 meters will be on the cobbles with a little, tough uphill section. It's the same finish where Eduard Grosu took a glorious win in last year's Sibiu Tour.

Stage 2: Sibiu - Braşov (162,8 km)

The second stage looks like a calm one on the first part, but the race is likely to explode on the final 30k, with the challenging climb to Poiana Braşov, and an even more difficult, very technical descent to Braşov.

Stage 3: Brașov - Focșani (176,3 km)

On the following day the peloton will pass the Carpathian Mountains, leaving Transylvania behind and going into Moldavia. The Ojdula climb is long but far from the finish. It's likely to be a stage for the strong sprinters.

Stage 4: Buzău - Târgoviște (124,7 km)

After Transylvania and Moldova, the peloton will ride in the old province called Țara Românească. It should be a good opportunity for the quick men in the peloton to fight for the win.

Stage 5: Bucharest - Bucharest (100,0 km)

The Turul României will end with a fast criterium in Bucharest's streets, with 20 laps of 5 kms each on completely flat roads, before the finish on the Piața Presei Libere.

11 Continental teams, 5 National teams and 4 Club teams will take part in the 2018 edition of the race:

You know, when I was working in Russia, the soviet era architectures were quite obvious. Little was left of pre-20th century stuff, with the exception of St. Petersburg[1]. By comparison, Romania should have more visible history in the architecture and the old towns, as it had more of all that going into the 20th century. But it was also an economic armpit of the soviet era, and hasn't been noted for a sparkling post-soviet recovery. At least, not when viewing from afar!

How is the view on the ground? Does the economy show promise and growth, such as we see in Slovenia and Slovakia? Or is it in the doldrums, like Moldova?

Stage 1 of the Turul Romaniei saw Peter Schulting from Monkeytown Continental Team taking the win ahead of Simon Pellaud and Onur Balkan

In the early part of the hilly stage from Alba Iulia to Sibiu a 13 men breakaway went clear, including some of the big pre-race favourites like Serghey Tvetcov, Cristian Raileanu and Schulting, and as pretty much also all othere big teams found a man in front, some early attempts by the peloton to bring the gap down came to a standstill quite quickly.

Some ~10 minutes ahead of the bunch, Schulting then attacked his breakaway companions inside the final 10k and celebrated a beautiful solo victory on the cobbles streets of Sibiu's old town

He also picked up some bonus seconds at the intermediate sprints underway, thereby building up a healthy gap of 19 seconds in the fight for the yellow leader's jersey he'll have to defend in another challenging finale tomorrow.

A three man breakaway group including Tour of Szeklerland winner Nicolae Tanovitchii went clear early on and with a ~4 minute gap approaching the final climb it looked quite promising for a while, but in the end all three were caught by the group of favourites. Tvetcov then attacked close to the top and went full out on the rapid 8k descent, never to be seen again by his competitiors. Emil Dima took second 23s after in a 1-2 for Romania, which saw everyone happy.

Former race leader Peter Schulting suffered with cramps on the final part of the climb and lost 1:15 to Tvetcov in the end, who now leads the GC with 23 seconds by Simon Pellaud and Mattia Bais

Stage 3 of the Turul României was another tough one with an average speed of 48 kph over the first hour and a special category climb in the middle. At that point a breakaway group including Nicolae Tanovitchii, Jeen de Jong and Cristian Raileanu was 4 minutes ahead, with Raileanu being a real dangerman for gc, sitting in 12th position 2:37 behind.

Sergey Tvetcov already was out of team mates at that time, so Cycling Team Friuli went for another GC threatening attack with Massimo Orlandi, who was joined by Stanimir Cholakov and had team mate Alessandro Pessot from the early breakaway waiting for him ahead. Classified less than a minute behind, both Orlandi and Cholakov would have been of real danger for Tvetcov, but with Illuminate joining the chase for Simon Pellaud they were brought back quickly after the descent.

When Baron punctured it was down to Tvetcov and Pellaud to keep the chase going themself, and although the race leader found some allies among the other Romanian teams in the race and could close down the gap far enough to keep Raileanu out of GC contention, in the end the winner of the stage came from the breakaway.

Nicolae Tanovitchii turned out to be by far the strongest from that group, dropping his breakaway compatriots with 5k to go and finishing solo by half a minute ahead of the others - but was relegated by the jury quickly after, as he had used a bit too much assistance from his team car after a mechanical around 10 km before the finish.

So it was Jeen de Jong who could celebrate his first victory on the podium in the end...

...which saw the young Dutchman confronted with a load of picture request from all the spectators around, which he happily fulfilled.

Serghey Tvetcov defended his yellow jersey with a 22s gap ahead of Pellaud.

"Everything is possible in Romania", winner Peter Schulting said in Târgoviște after another fast stage of the Turul României - and today he proved it certainly is.

It was short stage of only 124k and without a single categorized climb, but with most of the Top 10 still within just a handful of seconds, it still turned out to be a very interesting one, with GC riders going for both, the bonus seconds at the intermediate sprints, as well as the way of joining the breakaway group.

Onur Balkan and Mateusz Grabis went for the first way, picking up enough seconds to move up to 2nd and 3rd in GC, while Massimo Orlandi and Peter Schulting went on the attack when a group finally went clear after one hour of racing at 45.5 kph average.

Also yesterday's denied stage winner Nicolae Tanovitchii and Dani Crista (later to be called back to help with the chase) were part of that group, and with Tvetcov's yellow jersey in danger, neither of them was to eager to contribute much to the success of the breakaway. So after "doing most of the work anyway", Schulting decided to go for it solo with ~55k to go.

The remaining parts of the breakaway were caught quickly, but the Dutchmen continued to put the hammer down, extending his gap to a maximum of ~2:30 just 20k before the finish and becoming a real contender to take over the lead of the race. Tvetcov was searching for allies at that point and found help from the fellow Romanian Novak Team who joined him in the front of the peloton to chase down Schulting.

On from that point the gap began to decrease second by second, 1:43 at 15k, 1:15 at 10k and under half a minute with Five kilometers to go - but in the end this was enough for Schulting to celebrate his second win in the race, 7 seconds ahead of Onur Balkan and Filippo Ferronato.

Tvetcov now leads the race with 20 seconds ahead of Mateusz Grabis and two more ahead of Onur Balkan. Tomorrow's final criterium is perfectly flat, so on paper it's looking good for him to win his home race - but "everything is possible in Romania"...

The Turul României finished with a 100k city criterium in Bucharest yesterday - so with no pictures of sheeps, cows and landscape to be shown this time, but another good ~two hours of racing.

Onur Balkan had looked like the quickest sprinter in the race over the past days already, and yesterday his Turkish National Team played it perfectly. With Ahmet Örken (together with team mate Nazim Bakirci) they put another quick guy in the breakaway to avoid having to keep the peloton together all day...

...and when the early break was caught due to the work of the Romanian teams and Cycling Team Friuli with three laps to go, they went to the front and Balkan easily took the win in the end.

Due to the bonus seconds Balkan also moved up to Second in GC ahead of Mateusz Grabis, but couldn't prevent Sergey Tvetcov from celebrating a fantastic home victory in the 51st edition of the Turul României anymore.